GUCCI blazer, £2,270; trousers, £890; vest, £860; shirt, £525; bow tie, £175; loafers, £640 (gucci.com)
(Picture: Ruth Ossai)
Dressed in a black Axel Arigato jacket, Acronym x Nike tracksuit bottoms and a Uniqlo hat that hides his braids, Kojey Radical strides in to a west London photo studio on a cold Sunday afternoon, shakes my hand and takes a seat opposite me. On record he can sound gravel-voiced and confi - dent, but in person this bona fide Renaissance man — he’s a Mobo-nominated rapper, poet, visual artist with a first-class degree from London College of Fashion — is quietly spoken and deliberative, emotionally open and clear-eyed about his future ambitions. ‘I have always been a servant of creativity,’ he tells me.
Ostensibly we are here to discuss his debut album, Reasons to Smile: a wonderful record that follows on from his four acclaimed EPs and is inspired by lush Seventies funk, silky R&B, grime, jazz and rap, with lyrics that reflect on the wider Black British experience while remaining intensely personal. Its original title was Cannot Be Regret, a reference to the Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti’s quote that ‘once a man tries his best to be honest and truthful in all his endeavours then his life is just an experience and it cannot be regret’. The quote resonated with Radical when he noticed how all the outward success he had enjoyed in his career had failed to make him happy. ‘So much was going good in my life at the time,’ he recalls. ‘I’d bought a house. I was going to be a dad. My tour had sold out. So many things were going positive but I struggled to see the positive. I had to go on a personal journey to figure out what my life was and what I was becoming.’ It was that journey he ended up charting on his most personal work yet and also a journey that led back to his past.
